Hello, not sure if you have solved this yet. Here is one way:
HTML Code:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://dev.jquery.com/view/trunk/plugins/color/jquery.color.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#sideChat").animate({ backgroundColor: '#bc1b20', color: '#fff'}, 5000);
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="sideChat" style="width:100px; height:100px;">The is the area that is being animated</div>
</body>
</html>